Orissa govt urged to protect Puri beach erosion

Puri, July 19 (UNI) Puri District Magistrate Rashmi Ranjan Pattnaik has urged the Orissa government to take urgent measures to protect the erosion along the city coast.

Mr Pattnaik made the request following strange behaviour of the sea on the Puri coast crossing the conventional High Tide Limits (HTL) to engulf a major part of the extended marine drive road towards Sterling Resorts.

Nearly half of the fishermen population in the Pentkota area on the eastern part of the city coast had lost their shanties as the sea has swallowed an area of about 200 meters of the beach.

Local engineers have attributed the large scale erosion damage of the coast to the sandy nature of the beach. Earlier, the illumination posts erected by the State Tourism Development Corporation (STDC) were washed away causing huge loss.

Never before the residents of Puri had witnessed the strange phenomena of sea crossing its limits particularly along the Puri coast line.

Panicked over the behaviour of the sea, the District Collector has sent a team of works department engineers to Digha in West Bengal to find out the measures taken to protect the town.

Mr Pattnaik said another team would be sent to Goa where the authority had effectively arrested the coast erosion.

Beach Protection Council (BPC) President Jagannath Bastia has apprised Professor R Ramesh of Anna university of the beach erosion taking place on Puri coast and urged him to devise means to control the erosion.

Prof Ramesh has been entrusted by the Union Environment Ministry to assess environmental impact of the Orissa coast and to devise means to protect the coast from erosion. Mr Bastia also urged the Centre and Director of Ocean Management to depute a team of expert to ascertain the cause of large scale erosion on the Puri coast.

Local legislator and Orissa Assembly Speaker Maheswar Mohanty and the local BJD MP B K Tripathy local visited the affected areas to take stock of the situation.

UNI